s3782796 2022, Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) (Honours), Discipline of Art

I CAN’T STAND IT: A MULTI-MEDIA EXPLORATION OF MEMORY AND EMOTION

My drawing practice focuses on themes around memory, sentimentality, and individual disposition, framed via a conceptual representation of personal experience. This is shown through soft gestural graphite and coloured pencil drawings, depicting winged forms, birds or angels, contorted figures, and themes around naturalism, symbolism, and metaphor. I utilise a muted colour palette, working mainly with olive greens and subtle colours. I consider the desaturated colour and use of pencil as a way of highlighting feelings of ephemerality within my work, almost like fleeting memories.

The material feeling of paper is central to my practice. In Untitled 2 the use of overlapping paper is used to evoke the notion of frosted glass, arousing associations to having an unclear memory. I Will Never Be the Artist I Want to Be forms as a dizzying spiral of stream of consciousness. Additionally, my drawing employs naturalist imageries (re-occurring wing/bird imagery, bugs and fish) along with moments of evoking our human experience (the anxieties of a seven-year-old; the collection of sentimental items). Each of these approaches to creating drawings forms a melancholic display of free associations around memory, transition or circular and spiral thoughts.

My works are an exercise in personal vulnerability. One of the first works I showed was titled Things I Can No Longer Enjoy—a small, embroidered list of objects and smells, strongly pertaining to traumas that I have experienced. This drawing, and the showing of this work forms in my memory as a personally unnerving moment. These ephemeral and indefinable elements in my drawings evoke many personal instances within my life, and this is sometimes difficult. However, through these memory drawings I invite the viewer to intimately engage with each work, to perhaps experience thoughts that are located within indeterminate feelings. I invite the viewer to engage with my work on a personal level, hoping that they may relate my associations of childhood, loss, and sentimentality.

 

a deconstructed sketchbook hung up on the wall in a spiral composition, including all pages, the cover and the bindings. most of the pages are drawn on, featuring sketches of birds, wings, fish, bugs, and a collection of writing. in the middle of the spiral are a pair of golden embroidery scissors and a dead butterfly.
lilli barrios-mcgough, ‘i will never be the artist i want to be’, 2022, 35 sketchbook pages (pen, graphite, marker), binding materials, faux leather cover, embroidery scissors, dead butterfly.

seven birds and four fish drawn in black pen arranged randomly on a sketchbook page
lilli barrios-mcgough, ‘i will never be the artist i want to be’ [detail], 2022.

three outlines of a horses head at various angles drawn in black pen. overlaying the outlines are drawings of birds done in green marker.
lilli barrios-mcgough, ‘i will never be the artist i want to be’ [detail], 2022.

 

seven birds drawn in black pen. they are arranged in pairs. in the top left corner are a collection of small four pointed stars, and the word "lovers" is written in the bottom left.
lilli barrios-mcgough, ‘i will never be the artist i want to be’ [detail], 2022.

‘i am not religious. i used to kneel at the end of my bed when i was 7, hands clasped and head bowed praying to god that my family would forever be safe, that my parents would never die and my friends be happy forever. please lord i’m only 7. i don’t know how tiny little me was able to handle the weight of those emotions, the painful anxiety—i can barely handle it now. it blossoms and breaks through me starting at my chest, a heavy hurt that makes its way into my throat and chokes me up. i feel it in the back of my arms, in my hands, my thigh muscles tensing. i want my family to be safe, i never want my parents to die, i want my friends to be happy forever.’

a handwritten note on a sketchbook page, the note reads: "i am not religious. i used to kneel at the end of my bed when i was 7, hands clasped and head bowed praying to god that my family would forever be safe, that my parents would never die and my friends be happy forever. please lord im only 7. i dont know how tiny little me was able to handle the weight of those emotions, the painful anxiety - i can barely handle it now. it blossoms and breaks through me starting at my chest, a heavy hurt that makes its way into my throat and chokes me up. i feel it in the back of my arms, in my hands, my thigh muscles tensing. i want my family to be safe, i never want my parents to die, i want my friends to be happy forever."
lilli barrios-mcgough, ‘i will never be the artist i want to be’ [detail], 2022.

a colourful drawing on canvas paper. there is a large bird to the left of the piece, and the tain of the bird has been cut out. the bird is painted over with a white acrylic wash. in the middle of the piece are a range of colours that swirl around each other. coming up from the bottom of the page are orange and purple birds. in the middle of the page is a cut out print of a fairy, a mail stamp of mother mary, and a small pink japanese ticket.
lilli barrios-mcgough, untitled 1, 2022, coloured pencil, acrylic paint, marker, and found objects on canvas paper.

a closeup of a fairy thats been cut out from a print. a pink japanese ticket is stuck to the lower part of the cut out, to the left of it is a postage stamp featuring mother mary.
lilli barrios-mcgough, untitled 1 [detail], 2022.

coloured pencil drawing of two orange birds and two purple birds flying
lilli barrios-mcgough, untitled 1 [detail], 2022.

coloured pencil drawing of three purple birds and an orange bird all flying to a small green branch
lilli barrios-mcgough, untitled 1 [detail], 2022.

A3 butchers paper with loose charcoal human forms drawn on it. overlapping these forms are two drawings of tigger bouncing in graphite and a bear from a get well soon card drawn in brown coloured pencil. on both top corners of the page are paper towels stuck to with with ink and paint wiped on them.
lilli barrios-mcgough, untitled 2, 2022, charcoal, coloured pencil, graphite, and paper towel on butchers paper.

four pages stuck together to create a blocky collage. three of the pages are paper and respectively feature a drawing of a beetle, a bird drawn in red, and a bird drawn in graphite. between the beetle and the red bird is a page of paper towel with red paint splotches on it.
lilli barrios-mcgough, untitled 2, 2022, graphite, acrylic paint, and coloured pencil on paper and paper towel.

three pages collaged together. two of the pages are paper and one features a graphite drawing of a dead rabbit stung up by its left foot, the background is painted red. the other page has a graphite drawing of a clam shell. between these pages is a page of paper towel with small spots of black paint at the bottom.

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lilli barrios-mcgough
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